1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming system and an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Among image forming apparatuses such as printers, there are some image forming apparatuses that, in addition to printing data, send and receive data by communicating with terminal apparatuses or other image forming apparatuses. When list data, such as user list data or address-book data, including a plurality of data values is to be obtained from an image forming apparatus, the image forming apparatus sends the entire list data at one time.
The size of list data is increasing due to the greater functionality in image forming apparatuses. Accordingly, when the entire list data is sent to a client apparatus at one time, no other process can be performed in the client apparatus period from the time when the request to send the list data is sent to an image forming apparatus to the time when the entire list data is completed. For this reason, other processes are interrupted in some cases for a long period of time.